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Monday, February 15, 2016

February is the Cruelest Month

Not to disparage TS Eliot (one of my favourite poets) or poetry in general and yes I see the symbolism of why he designated April as cruel but for I respectfully disagree.

You see, I have had horses at home since 2012 and I'm starting to see patterns. The one that is driving me nutty is that February seems to be the time that they break stuff. It is also most typically the coldest month so fixing things outside leads to blue fingers (the air turns blue as well). I think it's the lack of regular exercise and just general winter doldrums but it seems that horses look for things to destroy this time of year.

Yesterday I went out to bring them in for supper and saw that they had snapped off one of the fence posts holding the hay net.

Great.

oh gosh darn it, you frisky horses and your hijinks I said. Or something like that.

I hauled it inside and checked over the two innocent looking equines. they looked fine and as surprised as me.
Irish: We were just standing here minding our own business when it just snapped. Seriously. Lucky we weren't injured.
Carmen: I could have gotten a concussion. I think I'll file a JOHSC* report.
Irish: I mean, how hard is it to be pole? You just have to stand there. Must have been depressed if you ask me.
I untangled the hay net muttering to myself. My fingers were getting too cold to move and my eyes were watering.

I rigged up the hay net to one post but was not happy with it. Today I was home so I kept an eye on them. Sure enough, within a couple hours they had it ripped and hay was everywhere.

I brought it inside to see if I can repair it. As I threw it grumpily on the floor I said to Ed, I think that when we are rich we will board the horses for the month of February and go south.
I expected him to try to cheer me up but instead he said ohh I really like that idea.

15 comments:

:) I like that idea, too, but I'm thinking take a couple with us and board them in a warm locale so I can ride. We're having a bit of a heat wave right now, but it feels colder than before...maybe because of the rain and wind. February is generally a muddy, cold, dark month for us.

I *lol*d at "how hard is it to be a pole...must be depressed." Hilarious: ) Our gate post is broken, snapped off at ground level, now being propped up by metal spikes and a diagonal piece of wood until we hear back from the one who installed our gate. I've lived here almost 10 years and Winters still surprise me. I learned this month not to pour hot water on a frozen gate latch. You already knew that right?: )

Ugh! Why can't these problems space themselves out? I've had everything breaking this month too, and I'm not even dealing with snow. Although, I think of the problems I had when I lived where it did snow, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with them anymore. I remember being flat on my back in bed with the flu and hearing a loud snap outside. I rolled over to look out the window and saw that the horses had chewed a wooden fence panel clean through and were trying to climb through the hole to get to the hay. I was the only one home, so I had to go out in the snow in my pajamas with a fever and hammer in a fresh fence panel.

I am forever jealous of people who take their horses to Florida for the winter to show! I don't want to show, just want to be warm and escape the horse silliness in the winter (Apollo is always super spicy in colder weather).

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Welcome

This is a blog to record my journey in raising a young and precocious Andalusian gelding. I should warn that there will be some heavy anthropomorphising and some humour. I am an amateur horse person so I suspect that I will make many mistakes but that's part of the journey, isn't it?

About Me

I work as a manager in Health care. I love my job but I also have two other passions: Photography and horses.
I am the proud servant of two horses: Irish and TB/QH cross and Steele a young Andalusian Gelding. Steele is the main subject of my blog but Irish features heavily. Also making appearances are d'Arcy my border collie (he often photo bombs my pictures), Belle my Australian Shepherd and Martin, Cat King of Oakfield Farm.